Pioneer Network is pleased to announce that its Food and Dining Clinical Standards Task Force: A Rothschild Regulatory Task Force has finalized new Dining Practice Standards agreed to by the following twelve national clinical standard-setting associations:

American Association for Long Term Care Nursing (AALTCN)

American Association of Nurse Assessment Coordination (AANAC)

American Dietetic Association (ADA)

American Medical Directors Association (AMDA)

American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)

American Society of Consultant Pharmacists (ASCP)

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA)

Dietary Managers Association (DMA)

Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association (GAPNA)

Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing (HIGN)

National Association of Directors of Nursing Administration in Long Term Care (NADONA/LTC)

National Gerontological Nursing Association (NGNA)

These nationally agreed upon new food and dining standards of practice support individualized care and self-directed living versus traditional diagnosis-focused treatment for people living in nursing home. The document includes the following new Standards of Practice:

Individualized Nutrition Approaches/Diet Liberalization

Individualized Diabetic/Calorie Controlled Diet

Individualized Low Sodium Diet

Individualized Cardiac Diet

Individualized Altered Consistency Diet

Individualized Tube Feeding

Individualized Real Food First

Individualized Honoring Choices

Shifting Traditional Professional Control to Individualized Support of Self Directed Living

New Negative Outcome

The New Dining Practice Standards document reflects evidence-based research available to-date as well as current thinking which is in some cases in advance of research – thus a Research Agenda also came out of this work and will be shared by Pioneer Network in the near future for anyone to refer to and consider.

The importance of these new agreed upon clinical standards cannot be overstated as food and dining are an integral part of individualized care and self-directed living for people living in nursing homes.

Pioneer Network will submit the new Dining Practice Standards to CMS, FDA, CDC and the long-term care community at large. It is anticipated that CMS will refer to these new agreed-upon standards of practice within long term care interpretive guidance where they fit as CMS usually refers to the current standards of practice set by the clinicians who work within the long term care field. It is the goal of the Task Force that surveyors, clinicians and interdisciplinary team members will put these new standards into practice in order to continue their efforts to improve quality of life for those living in nursing homes across the country.

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Retirement Living & Health:

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